Hard Evidence
by AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: AU Based on the BBC series 'Ashes to Ashes' where a straight laced police officer is deposited via brain injury into the mad, bad world of 1980's policing...I'll let you figure out the casting :
1. Chapter 1

Castiel is driving Claire to school when the radio in the front of the car starts to chatter, an armed man has a hostage down by the waterfront. It's Claire's birthday, her first since her parents passed away in the house fire that left her an orphan in his care. Nine months and he's still struggling to be a pseudo father rather than his own, awkward-uncle Cas self.

He slaps the blue light on the roof, makes Claire promise to stay in the car, and heads for the scene. As he drives, folders slide across the back seat, Sam Winchester's file cascades to the floor. A case in through need of writing up that one – a psychological goldmine.

Leaving Claire behind, Castiel exits the car, the weight of the police issue pistol comforting as always in the holster under his rumpled suit jacket. His badge is in his breast pocket. Castiel Novak, Detective. Degree in psychology, Masters in behavioural studies and experience at Langley with the FBI. Still terrible with people.

He approaches the police cordon and passes the uniformed officer, cautiously moving towards the man who is currently holding a street vendor hostage. The man has greasy hair, a thin pointed nose and jumbled teeth. Castiel touches his fingers to his gun, breathes.

"I'm Detective..."

"I know who you are." The man shoves the vendor to the ground and points the gun squarely at Castiel. It's not the first time a gun as been pointed right between his eyes, but Castiel will never get used to the watery feeling in his legs when it happens.

"What is it that you're hoping to achieve?" Castiel asks calmly.

The man just smiles, lowers his gun, and runs.

Castiel is after him before he even registers the man's disappearance. Sprinting down a concrete ramp and onto the wet grey sand, under the pier and over some tattered concrete blocks to a barge that's moored nearby. He can't hear the thud of backup coming after him, but he has his gun, he's old enough, experienced enough to know better than this – but still he chases the man down.

He stumbles into the darkness of the barge, slithering on wet metal struts, there's a sagging, old mattress inside, some homeless soul has found shelter here, but no sign of the man. Castiel walks slowly, black dress shoes finding purchase on the slick metal. Dripping water echoes, lattices of rust give way and Castiel presses on, eyes squinting.

The shove catches him off guard, and he's forced forwards and down, falling onto the wet, foul, mattress. The gun levels with his face again, a hollow click as the hammer is pulled back.

All Castiel can think of is Claire.

"Please..."

He actually sees the bullet, gleaming and round, furrowed by the barrel, as it streaks towards him.

He doesn't even feel the mattress beneath him as he blacks out, mind shattered by shining metal.

(-*-)

Castiel jerks upwards with a strangled breath, sitting upright in one nauseating motion.

The ground under him is moving, swaying softly. For a second he thinks he's being carried, lifted and taken to an ambulance.

Waves roll, a seagull cries out.

A boat. He's on a boat.

Thudding bass pummels the walls, music at high volume, someone cheers and glass chinks, a cork pops. Castiel climbs off of the bed that he hadn't even noticed he was sitting on, stumbles towards the door and, clinging to the frame, looks out with wide eyes.

Men in white and grey suits with pink shirts or red ties, women in tight dresses and furs, the music grows in volume, Vienna, a song he hasn't heard since he was a child and it played on the kitchen radio almost constantly. He glances down, finding that his rumpled dark suit is gone, replaced by an open silk shirt, tiger striped and tight, white jeans.

He makes his unsteady way towards the gangplank, disembarking to find himself in a strange dockside area, utterly lost.

So, this is some kind of nightmare.

Even as he thinks it, sirens blare, boots thunder on the asphalt, and several armed officers run past. Castiel attempts to attract attention, one hand rising to touch the place he knows the bullet hit, but there's nothing there, and the policemen have already left him behind. Nothing about this makes any kind of sense. Nothing about the world around him is familiar. Save for the fact that...it almost is...like a place he visited once, a long time ago. A holiday town soon forgotten.

An arm around his throat cuts off any further thought. And it's just what he deserves, he thinks as the gun presses against his temple – to get shot in the head twice in one day. A fitting end for someone as dedicated to logic as he has been.

"You tipped them off, you...utter bastard." A British accent snarls.

Castiel twists slightly and catches sight of large dark eyes with dark pouches under them, dark hair and distinctly round face. His breath is choked off again, and Castiel really wishes that he'd died the first time, at least in the line of duty, not by a mystery boat, dressed like a character from one of Gabriel's 'private movies'.

The screech of tires approaching on the empty lot beside them halts Castiel's fearful train of thought, and the British man follows the progress of the large black car so intently that he loosens his hold on Castiel's throat.

The car doesn't so much stop as slide to a halt, doors opening to disgorge three men, and three more different men you wouldn't find anywhere.

From the rear, a squirrely guy in white drainpipe jeans similar to Castiel's own, a tucked in grey shirt, red tie and black nylon jacket. The passenger seat is vacated by a dark skinned man in a light brown turtleneck, leather jacket and creased slacks.

The cold metal of the gun barrel presses into his sweating temple, and Castiel is pretty sure that the third man is the last thing he is ever going to see – a tall, broad guy in a white leather jacket, tight black jeans and crocodile cowboy boots.

All things considered, a rusty barge was probably a worse sight to be his last.

"Put. The. Hooker. Down." Guy number three, obviously in charge, demands, producing a six shooter that is most definitely not police issue. "Now Crowley."

"Gun down first Winchester." The brit snarls, and his hold on Castiel tightens.

"Please, think about what you're doing." Castiel feels his training snap back into place like a pulled rubber band. "These officers, are obviously seeking a fatality outcome, and any showing of violent bravado on your part will result only in a temporary high of adrenaline and testosterone before you are ultimately shot to death."

Everyone looks at him funny.

"I swear, rents are getting smarter." Leather jacket quips to squirrelly.

Crowley releases him and moves away.

"No harm done, eh?" he says placating. "No need to..."

The dark skinned man shoots Crowley in the foot.

"Nice one Rufus." The guy in charge grins.

That resonates.

"Rufus Turner?" Castiel looks from him to the squirrelly guy, who had seemed almost familiar. "...Detective Chuck Shirley?"

"...uh...hi?" The guy frowns at him, but Castiel is already looking from him to the third man, now removing aviators to display hardened green eyes. "Lieutenant...Dean...Winchester."

It can't be...yet it is. The fictional police officers created by Sam Winchester during the time he spent as a coma patient. Castiel had interviewed him shortly before his suicide and he had described them well.

The music, the clothes, the very posters on the wall beside him...

1981...it had to be.

Castiel passes out on the dirt.

Dean looks down at the unconscious prostitute.

"My reputation clearly proceeds me."


	2. Chapter 2

_Fun story, I'm having to google all this slang etc and most of it is so ridiculous that I wanted to use it. All of it. All inaccuracies are a result of me being born in the 90's and living in England. Also, sorry for the short update. _

The car Castiel wakes up in is a 1967 Chevy impala and he knows this because Sam told him in one of their interviews.

_Classic Dean, buys a car ten years out of date, drives it hard and nurses her back together when she inevitably breaks down. I think he loved that car more than anything else. He used to bend my fingers back when I tried to change the radio station. But...here's the funny thing...he ruined that car, saving my life, smashed another car out of the way when some asshole dealer tried to run me down. He told me...that he might love that car more than anything else...but family was more important, even than his own life. He was my brother. That was all that mattered._

"_You do remember Sam, that you are an only child?" Castiel had said, noting this down on his file. "Your parents were Samuel and Deanna...Campbell, not Winchester." _

_Sam had looked at him, sad and lonely in his hospital room, fresh from his coma dream of the 1970's, kicking ass and taking names with a brother he had imagined into being after his car accident. Car accident – saved by Dean from car crash – didn't take a PHD in psychology to work it out._

"_Dean is my brother. In all the ways that matter." He'd said._

_Two days later he'd thrown himself off of the roof, determined to return to that coma dream._

The same one Castiel woke in, albeit ten years after Sam's fantasy.

He wakes up in the impala, looking out of the window at the police precinct, an unfamiliar, ugly building. Beyond the glass of the impala's window the three officers are talking, and Castiel watches Dean smirking with his men, wondering how on earth he had managed to recreate such a perfect man, simply from Sam's descriptions.

"Hey, look who's back in the land of the living." Dean raps on the glass, then opens the door, allowing Castiel out onto the street. "Was starting to worry. Can't have another hooker die in the back of the car – it's the paperwork, so much paperwork."

Castiel looks at him, sees his lips moving with the words, hears him breathe. The air whistles past, traffic blares, he can smell meat frying and bread baking from a diner down the street. The air is slightly colder than he likes it. All of this, created by his brain as he fights to survive a gunshot to the head.

Abruptly he remembers Claire, and he knows what he has to do. Sam had died to return here, now he will leave by the same route.

Castiel steps into the road, prepared to meet his end.

Dean yanks him back my the collar, hoisting him around the waist and picking him up easily.

"Seriously? Still with the death wish?" She adjusts Castiel's weight in his arms and starts up the steps towards the station. "Still, if I sucked dick for money, I'd probably throw myself under a car too."

Castiel can't bring himself to argue with a figment of his own imagination.

Inside, the precinct is square and uniform. Glass partitions help to hold the cigarette smoke in sold walls within the meeting rooms, and both the floor and ceiling is rendered in checkerboard pattern, one in flat light fittings the other in vinyl tiles. Dean's office is a glass cube in the middle of a chaotic arrangement of desks and filing cabinets, his name on the frosted door in chipped gold lettering.

Dean lowers Castiel to the floor, standing him up as he storms towards his office.

"Chuck, get the hooker a drink, something from the canteen, not the lobby machine."

Chuck scurries off to do just that.

"I am not a hooker." Castiel snarls, finally gathering enough anger to finally confront the figments he has surrounded himself with.

He is largely ignored.

"Rufus, I need someone watching that dick bag at the hospital, round the clock, until he's well enough to shove in a cell."

Rufus glares at him.

"I'll give you over time – now move it."

"I anybody listening to me?" Castiel asks, loudly. Dean raises an eyebrow.

"Dude, chill, we'll have you back on the streets in no time. Stay slinky."

"I AM NOT A PROSTITUTE!"

Everyone at the desks around them is staring. Castiel glares at Dean, really hoping that he'll wake up any second now in a hospital and that all of this will just be a very bad dream.

"You were on Crowley's boat." Dean ticks off on his fingers. "Crowley, the biggest flaming piece of euro trash this side of the state...wearing, that." Dean gestures at him again.

Castiel sinks to the floor, knees on the floor tiles and really, really tries to wake up. Dean reaches down and tries to lift him by the collar. Castiel grabs Dean's belt and looks up at him, actively fighting to stay exactly where he is.

"Fuckin a." One of the guys behind them blurts. Dean shoots him a deathly glare and drags Castiel to his feet, attempting to shove him into his office.

But Castiel has seen something.

On the desk, behind Dean, is a name plate.

A name plate for 'Detective Castiel Novak'.

He feels suddenly, very, very sick.

Dean catches his gaze and follows it, looking down at the desk. He snatches up the leather I.D wallet beside the name plate, looks down at it and then back up at Castiel.

Castiel reaches out and takes the I.D. From the surface of the desk he picks up the police badge.

"What's the hooker doing with a badge?" Chuck asks, returning with a can of tab.

"This, is our replacement Detective." Dean says quietly, before he turns and retreats to his office.

Castiel looks down at his I.D. numbly.

"Don't mind him." Chuck mutters. "He's still all cut up about Sam."

"Chuck." One of the uniformed women chirps reprovingly from her desk. "Maybe right now isn't the time to..."

"I knew Sam Winchester." Castiel cuts in. "Detective Winchester...or at least I did...what happened to him?"

"He..."

"Chuck!"

"Bex, he asked..."

"Fine...Sam drowned...oh...about five years ago...he drove his car into the river." Bex, or as her nameplate proclaims her 'Becky Rosen' says. "After that Dean got promoted to Lieutenant...and we all moved down here with him."

Castiel blinks. Sam Winchester died to return here...but he had died after spending five more years in this place. Dead in both worlds. Perhaps it was good that Dean had saved him after all.

"He still doesn't like it talked about." Chuck puts in quietly.

The office door slams open.

"Novak, get your ass in here." Dean thunders.

"Make the most of it." Chuck tells him under his breath, "After a week or so he stops going easy on you."


	3. Chapter 3

_Sorry for the sloppy writing in the last few chapters, I have to admit, I wasn't trying that hard with this one. But yesterday I had an actually plot idea, so yay! Quality of writing shall improve._

Castiel hates Dean Winchester.

There, he said it, he hates a figment of someone else's imagination.

He has no idea why he's adopted Dean into his psyche, what does Dean represent? For Sam he was the strong family structure that he'd been lacking, Castiel had discovered that fairly early on. But now, in his own mind – what was Dean?

Chuck was clearly a representation of his inadequacies and concerns, whereas Rufus displayed attributes that probably came as a result of his own repressed xenophobia and sexism - as he hadn't stopped making rough and derogatory comments in the few hours Castiel had known him.

But Dean, Dean remained a mystery.

Since they had spoken about the basics of the sting on board the boat, Dean had been busy forming the next stage of his plan, which had left Castiel at his desk trying to figure out what was expected of him. He had resolved to find a way home, quickly and calmly.

Now though, he's pissed.

Castiel thought all of this whilst watching Dean give his team the word on Crowley, and the reason Castiel hated him, was because Dean was a raving homophobe.

Crowley it seemed, was gay, and his boyfriend Alistair ran a sex trafficking ring that Dean was desperate to bust. Usually Castiel would expect little from his fellow officers aside from tight lipped hard work and a few comments about the guy being a monster. Dean was practically crucifying him, both for the criminality of his business, and his sexuality.

"We think he's bringing in a new group of girls this week." Dean struck the side of the wipe-clean board next to Crowley's picture. "And we've got his shirt lifting buddy in custody at the hospital, charged with possession of crack..."

Someone sniggered.

Castiel reproached himself mentally, clearly he was reacting immaturely.

"And the employ of prostitutes for his private party." Dean continues. "Now, our friend of Dorothy won't give up any information on his boyfriend...so we're at a loss as to where this shipment is coming in. We need information."

"Why don't we drag in the people from the boat?" Someone asks from behind Castiel.

"Because I have better things to do than put the wind up a bunch of shit-stabbers." Dean snaps. "We need actual Intel, not hearsay and pillow talk..."

"Enough!" Castiel stands up sharply.

"Yes, detective?" Dean says tightly.

"You've told us all you can, so why not let us get to work?" Castiel meets his eye, refusing to be intimidated by an imaginary man in cowboy boots and ridiculously tight pants. "Then we can focus on the _case_ against Alistair and not on whose cock he sucks."

Stunned silence greets this pronouncement.

"Did he just say..." Bex's eyes widen.

Dean scowls.

"Novak, a word – please."

Dean storms to his office and for the second time that day, Castiel follows him.

With the glass door slammed behind them and the blinds drawn over the windows, Dean's office is an oasis of quiet in the precinct. Though, Castiel imagines that a classic oasis would have less of a scent of malt liquor, and probably fewer centrefold women on the back wall.

Dean throws himself into his chair and raises his boots onto the desk, lighting a cigarette absently.

"What is it with you and the benders then?" Dean asks, words underlined with blank hostility.

Castiel sighs. "Really? Is this really necessary?" He wonders when his time at St. Michael's foster home is going to stop coming back to bite him in the ass. Probably never. It had taken him long enough to come out, now he was trapped in a dream world with his own catholic guilt. Terrific.

"It is if your little act interferes with my investigation." Dean exhales a furious stream of smoke.

"What act?"

"Saint Castiel – friend of the fags." Dean sneers. "Anyone would think..."

"What?" Castiel squares up to him.

"That you were doing some back biting of your own...Detective." Dean's eyes narrow and Castiel bristles.

"And if I am?"

Such a blatant declaration seems to wrong foot the other man, and Castiel is glad, because he isn't going to take this from his own brain, not now after over seven thousand dollars of therapy.

"Wasn't so long ago that every one of them was breaking the law." Dean says pointedly.

"Not anymore though." Castiel leans both hands on the desk and looks Dean in the eye, up close the illusion doesn't waver, Dean is tanned and Castiel can see freckles on his skin, individual eyelashes, the flicker of his pulse in his throat. He smells like old spice, whisky and something really familiar, a long ingrained scent from his memory. What is it? He shakes away the feeling, glares at the other man.

"What does it mean to you, Dean?" Castiel murmurs. "Why does it bother you so much? That two men can be in love? That they can have perfectly legitimate sex?"

"They're men." Dean growls. "Great big, hairy, stinking, men. Nothing about love in it. Just men acting like women."

"They're men, Dean. They have sex, sweaty...muscular...male...sex." Castiel finds that he has leaned a lot closer than he intended. "Nothing weak or womanly about it."

Dean swallows, and Castiel can hear it, hear the rough breath he lets out.

So this is what Dean is. Understandable. Self hatred and libido in white leather. Castiel wonders why he hadn't spotted it sooner.

For a second Castiel wonders what would happen if he kissed him.

Of course, Dean is wondering the same thing. Though Castiel would be surprised to know it, that someone he made up could think thoughts in secret from him.

Chuck bursts into the office.

"Dean..."

For a second Castiel could swear Dean looked afraid.

"What?" He snaps, dropping his feet from the desk and looking as if he's about to stand, then thinking better of it.

"We have a lead on when the girls are being brought in." Chuck says nervously. He looks at Dean, clearly expecting him to leap into action.

"Ok...great. Get on it." Dean mutters, one hand white knuckled on the edge of his desk.

"But..."

"Now, Chuck!" Dean snaps.

Chuck flees the office and the door swings shut behind him.

Dean lets out a long, frustrated sigh.

Castiel can't help the chuckle that escapes him. It is rather funny, watching his own sexual frustration played out in front of him.

"Are you laughing at me?" Dean says sourly.

"I can't help it." Castiel chuckles again as if to prove his point. "You're just...oh if my psychologist could see me now..."

Dean glares at him.

"Get out."

Castiel raises an eyebrow. When would his own constructs stop being so rude to him?

Dean shifts uncomfortably in his seat, a flush creeping up his neck. Despite himself, Castiel has to admit that he's ever so slightly attracted to Dean right now. Which probably harks back to his college fascination with very straight, very strong men.

Maybe he should be writing some of this down?

Although obviously, he wouldn't be able to take the notes with him when he went home.

At Dean's deepening scowl he relents.

"Perhaps when you're...less excited, you'd care to join us?"

Castiel leaves without waiting for Dean's reply, feeling oddly victorious.

That feeling lasts only until Chuck presents him with the information gleaned from Crowley's interview at the hospital. As it turned out the other man hadn't been able to stick to his guns on the whole 'no comment' thing, and had broken under the threat of jail time. (Rufus had also broken the brit's nose, as well as taking away the pain killers that he'd been given for his gunshot wound, but Castiel wouldn't find that out until later).

The new lot of girls being trafficked in by Alistair were arriving in three days, at the ferry port. Dock Sixteen.

Castiel reads the information and goes cold.

Why would he do this to himself? Why would he put himself through this all over again?


	4. Chapter 4

_I really do suggest that you find and play 'Money – the flying lizards' when it's mentioned in the text, not because I want to foist my music on you, but because it's Castiel's sexy entrance song – and really, isn't that reason enough? _

_Also, for anyone interested my novel is now available in hard copy, as well as ebook, check my profile for a link._

At the end of the day, when everyone at the precinct seems set to go home, Castiel is still sitting at his desk in a hideous silk shirt, wondering what his brain is up to. It had created people, this place, and a link to a time in his life best left in the pages of his psych evaluation...and yet his brain hadn't seen fit to give him a place to sleep or even any clothes.

Maybe this was a sign that he took his work far too seriously.

Or perhaps he just wasn't very imaginative.

Eventually, as the smoke filled room began to darken, and the various other officers began to drift off for home, Castiel reluctantly decided to approach Bex at her secretarial desk.

"Miss Rosen?"

She beamed up at him. At least one of these figments was friendly.

"Can you find out where I live?...if anywhere." He asks.

The woman frowns at him.

"Don't you know sir?" She's already reaching for a drawer in her desk, searching out files.

"I've only just arrived...I'm afraid lodgings slipped my mind."

"No problem." She assures him, flicking through a bundle of papers. "Here it is, current address..."

She looks up at him. "Oh, you'll know it, it's above the bar where all the officers go after work. Harvells."

Castiel looks at her, still completely in the dark.

"Just...go to the end of the street, then two blocks over. You can't miss it." Bex assures him. "Oh, and...if you wanted to change...we've got some clothes in storage from a guy who hung himself in that office building last week. Banker or something."

Castiel blesses his brain for opening a window as it slammed a door in his face.

"I'd like to see those, if you wouldn't mind." He tells her.

(-*-)

Harvell's was run by a woman named Ellen, her husband having left her with the place upon his death. He'd been a detective, running his family's business on the side, and so Dean continued to show his loyalty to the deceased man by making Harvell's his home away from home.

The place was usually full of police officers by the end of the day, it served good, cheap beer and baskets of chicken and fries, so it had everything they wanted after a day of work. Dean could dependably be found seated at a corner table in the quietest part of the bar, drinking glass after glass of scotch and calmly smoking his way through a half packet of cigarettes. Tonight was no exception, and the news of Alistair's incoming shipment of women had him on edge, so the scotch bottle was emptying quicker than usual. He really wanted to stop Alistair and his entire, loathsome organisation, and this might be his only chance to make something stick.

Every month saw more women out on the street, forced into prostitution after being snatched off of the streets of foreign countries. That last lot had been mostly Russian, and before that a bunch of terrified Greek teenagers. It was disgusting, worse than seeing local girls out looking for John's, because these women had been kidnapped or pressed into it by men who they thought they loved.

Dean glared gloomily into his drink. He couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

And then of course, there was Novak. Dean anticipated trouble from the other man, he was uppity, educated and stood to interfere with the way Dean got things done. He wouldn't allow anything to endanger the operation. Too many people were counting on him.

Someone put a record on, most probably Jo, Ellen's daughter, who waitressed in the evenings and had a long lasting crush on Dean, of which he was very aware. Money, by the Flying Lizards filled the air in all its modern pop glory. Dean winced and drained his glass. He longed for the quiet, filthy bars that he'd frequented at the start of his career and when Sam was still alive.

More and more he found himself wondering what Sam would do, listening to that inner voice whenever faced with trials. It was the only thing that had kept him from punching Novak in his knowing, holier-than-thou face.

The door to Harvell's opened, the frosted glass fracturing the light from the outside bulb. Dean tapped ash from his eleventh cigarette, glancing up at the newcomer, a tight assed businessman type who stood out like a first class passenger in steerage. Light grey suit, white shirt, red tie and matching red braces. He was slim underneath the dandyish clothing, but hard with it, rather than lank as a prep school scholar. Despite himself, Dean felt himself grow warm under his leather jacket, blood swimming with alcohol as he raked his eyes over the delicate hips in those charcoal dress pants.

He almost groaned aloud, and not in pleasure, he hated it when this happened. Lately it only took one glance at a tight ass or a pair of incongruously soft lips and he got hard.

Dean's eyes finally reached those of Detective Novak, who raised an eyebrow pointedly at the perceived once over, before heading to the bar to order a drink.

Dean shifted uncomfortably, and stubbed out his cigarette before opening the pack and lighting another idly. It was nothing, a glance gone astray. So why did he feel like he'd just shown his hand in a game where there was everything to play for?

Castiel made his way to the table with a glass of wine, and Dean mentally chalked this up as another mark against the man's character. Only high class idiots with more education than brains drank wine in Dean's book.

Castiel sat down opposite him.

"So, about this case..." The dark haired man begins.

Dean holds up a hand.

"I'm off duty."

Castiel looks at him sadly.

"You and I both know that it never stops."

"Point." Dean pours himself another glass. "But...it's my investigation and it's been building for months...so you don't have to concern yourself with it."

"Well I am." Castiel tells him levelly. "It's an important case, believe me, I know. And I have to be there. It's vital."

"I'm really not going to like you, am I?" Dean muses. "Coming into my precinct, acting like you know so much better...thinking I'm not good enough for the job..."

Fuck, Dean hadn't meant to say that.

Castiel frowns at him. "I didn't say anything like that..."

"You act like it." Dean mutters darkly, casting an eye across the bar to where Chuck and Bex are making cow eyes at each other.

"Dean, don't think anything, about you." Castiel tells him.

And that kind of stings.

"You think you know me, though." Dean tells him. "You knew my name...and now you think you know...things, about me."

Castiel sighs. "That's what this is about." He takes a sip of wine, then sets the glass down. "Dean...your sexuality means nothing to me."

Dean's face turns stormy.

"Shut your mouth." He hisses.

Castiel looks at him, like he's trying to read the fine print on his skin.

"Stop looking at me like that." Dean mutters, looking down at the table.

"Why would I make you this way?" Castiel says quietly. "Sam never said anything about you being..."

"You knew Sam?" Dean's face opens up at that, almost painfully vulnerable.

"Yes." Castiel says faintly, telling himself that this isn't real. Dean's pain isn't real. "He and I were sort of...friends. I was very sad to hear what happened to him."

Dean downs his drink.

"I'm very sorry I wasn't able to help him." Castiel tells him, because he is, he is terribly sorry that he couldn't make Sam believe that this world was a dream, that Sam had killed himself.

Dean looks at him.

"Say you're right about me...about what I am." He whispers quickly, almost fearfully. "And I'm right about you...would you come upstairs with me?"

Castiel looks at him, and wonders why his psyche is so torn up. Maybe it's Alistair's presence, maybe it's the feeling of prosecution that he's carried with him all his life, fearful of being gay, of turning into something so bad that he didn't even want to consider it. But right now, all he wants is Dean. All that strength, all that warmth and skin and muscle to lose himself in.

Even if it isn't real.

Castiel downs his glass of cheap wine and touches Dean's knee under the table. He can hear the other man swallow, and wonders at his own imagination. Then Castiel stands and walks towards the stairs at the back of the restaurant, that lead up to the apartment overhead.

As he reaches the top and unlocks the door he hears Dean's boots on the stairs behind him.

They go into the apartment, painted white with red fixtures and an alarming zig-zag couch. As the door closes behind them, Castiel turns and moves a little closer, leaning up to kiss Dean, and it's only then that he realises how much he's wanted to do so.

Dean avoids his lips, and his breath smells of whisky and unfiltered cigarettes.

"Men, don't kiss." Dean mutters. And even though the rejection burns up Castiel's spine, Dean's proximity and the gravel of his voice soothe his anger.

Dean takes a breath, hands roughly groping Castiel's hips as they look at each other. Then he turns Castiel, briskly pushes him down and against the arm of the couch, bending him over it.

"Take your pants down." Dean is already panting with desire and expectation, and despite the crudeness of the situation, Castiel feels a bolt of arousal, he has never been treated like this before, never known how wild he was making somebody, and yet been totally at their control. And clearly his mind is offering him this...illusory union, knowing that he'll enjoy it.

His hands are clumsy as they reach behind him to unclasp his braces, and Dean's fingers bump his own, taking the task for him. Castiel undoes his fly, letting the suit pants uncover his bare skin, still connected to the newly acquired red braces at the front.

He hears Dean's zipper, and two hands palm and part him firmly. Castiel wriggles against the end of the couch, feeling somehow more perverse for being mostly clothed.

Dean spits and Castiel feels fingers wetting his cleft, and he can't suppress a moan at the sudden contact. Dean says nothing, just continues to probe and stretch as Castiel shivers and whines. The dark haired man curls his fingers into the couch cushions and bucks backwards, almost crying out at the feel of Dean's rough fingers pushing further into him, touching flesh gone unstimulated for far too long.

"Dean..." Castiel twists, but even with his head on its side he can't see the man behind him, not his face anyway. "Dean...say something..."

"Think you're ready?" Dean says, throat thick.

Castiel nods brokenly.

Without lube, with only Dean's saliva on both of them, it takes a long, long time to get the other man buried inside of him. Castiel's breathy moans hitch as Dean grunts, pushing forwards a little at a time, feeling heat and the vice like grip of Castiel's body overwhelm his senses. The dark haired man is begging by the time Dean's fully inside of him, and Dean grabs the back of the couch with one hand, Castiel's hip with the other, rutting in earnest, feeling like he has to come soon or else have his legs give out.

With his hips on the arm of the couch, Castiel can't touch himself, can only feel Dean moving inside of him and shiver at the brief shocks of intense and half forgotten pleasure. He buries his face in the sofa cushions and moans unrestrainedly, letting his body go limp to Dean's thrusts, allowing himself to be bruised by the other man's hands.

Dean's still mostly clothed, the only parts of his Castiel can feel are the thick length of him sliding into his body over and over again, and the touch of his abdomen against the taught flesh of his ass. He focuses on those sensations, riding them until his body tingles with euphoria, desperate for orgasm.

Dean's thrusts are accompanied by soft grunts, hitches of his breath, and his hand on Castiel's hip never moves, only grips tighter as he moves faster, finding the angle at which Castiel's body doesn't fight him, but instead opens easily, letting him bury himself, straight down.

Castiel groans into the couch, knees parting further on the floor.

Dean hammers through a few more thrusts, hips hitching up and forcing himself as deep as possible before he comes with a satisfied, breathless moan. He pulls out almost immediately, leaving Castiel spread on the couch, humming with pleasure from his toes to his lips, Castiel produces a whimper of dissatisfaction, and Dean rolls him roughly onto his back, hips raised on the end of the couch like an offering, bearing his reddened, leaking cock like a gift.

Dean licks his own palm and jerks Castiel so quickly that he can barely move his hips in time with the fist on him. He cries out when the warmth in his body finally turns white hot, shooting through him unbearably as he comes over Dean's hand.

He comes back to himself, realising that his pants are around his ankles, his abdomen exposed and spattered with semen, his lips bitten red and plump in a fit of pleasure.

Dean looks down at him, face damp with sweat, jeans open and displaying his spent, slick cock, white leather jacket and boots still on.

Castiel pants until his breath comes back, sighing shakily.

Dean wipes his hand on a throw pillow, zips himself shut with a wince.

"I'm gonna go." Dean mutters. He stands up, shifting awkwardly in tacky jeans. "Don't...uh...don't tell anyone about this."

"I won't." Castiel says unsteadily, finding his voice hoarse from moaning.

Dean nods stiffly, and then he's gone.

Castiel lies bonelessly on the couch, wondering why his mind hadn't made Dean stay with him.


	5. Chapter 5

_I've had four hours sleep. So sorry if this is shit, but I felt I needed to update._

_For anyone interested my novel is now available in hard copy, as well as ebook, check my profile for a link._

To say that the work atmosphere the next day is 'tense' would be a terrible understatement.

While Chuck and Rufus assemble evidence on the large display board at the precinct, Dean sits in his office with his shades on, nursing a mug of Irish coffee, now more whisky than anything else. Castiel meanwhile, sits at his desk making notes in unrelenting red ink. He has to work, and work hard, to avert the inescapable.

The day after tomorrow is the day of the shipment.

The day of Gabriel's murder.

His stomach clenches just thinking about it, that awful ghost from his past, dredged up and flung before him in what might be his last seconds of life. It reminds him more than ever that he was never free – all these years he has been owned by that memory, subjugated by it. All the therapy, all his careful, diligent work...he is only now beginning to realise what a thin pretence it was. Part of him had never left that room, part of him had died with Gabriel, or before, in that terrible place.

If he could claw the memories out he would. As it is, he has this one chance to make something better. One chance to lay his ghosts to rest.

"...hung over is my guess." Bex confides in Chuck as they walk past the desk. "He's been acting like a bear with a nose full of bees all day."

"It's the case." Chuck tells her, loyally, as Castiel wishes that his mind would stop poking him with the memory of Dean. He gets it, he feels guilty for indulging himself when he should be thinking about the bust, so could the unceasing reminders just stop already?

"Maybe..." Bex still seems unconvinced.

"That, and it's not like he's getting any." Chuck murmurs.

Bex tips her head forwards, hiding behind her hair. "That's not our business."

Castiel thinks she's his favourite construct, above all. Just for leaving his sorer thoughts alone.

Castiel goes back to his notes. The fictional sex life of his fictional boss, in this fictional world, is none of his concern.

He has to get home, back to Claire and his work, back to his life.

He looks down at the sheets of paper in front of him; _Alistair arrives, shipment, Holloway Motel, Gabriel dies._

He won't let it happen, even in this mix of dream and memory, he cannot physically stand by and let his brother die like that.

Again.

He works on the case, knowing that it's up to him. Some part of his brain is aware that trying to inform or engage these creations, to try and explain his predicament to them, would be pointless. Most of his brain is clearly in shock, denying his injuries. Only this 'self' that it has given him, is aware. Only he can save Gabriel.

And maybe then he can go home.

He so wants to go home.

It wasn't perfect, it wasn't any safer than this place...and yet, here is where he feels the most vulnerable. Away inside his mind where old monsters could be lurking, and Gabriel's memory stalks the place like a winter hardened wolf.

He hates it here. Hates the cigarette smoke, the clothes, the awful food and the people. Maybe it's some part of himself trying to tell him something, but he has no idea what could possibly be accomplished by surrounding himself with racists, sexists and bigots.

And...he was back to Dean.

The precinct is closing down for the evening when a new arrest comes in. Castiel is picking listlessly at gluey chopped macaroni and soy sauce, missing his favourite Thai restaurant with a passion. Dean is doing likewise, shovelling forkfuls of the stuff one handed in his office whilst going over old arrest records.

Not that Castiel is particularly interested in Dean.

Dean can do whatever the hell he likes as far as Castiel is concerned. He's a brief electrical pulse in his dying brain.

Dean can have his little corner of hallucinationopolis. Castiel is the one who owns this place.

Castiel is the one in control.

The new arrest is a boy, maybe seventeen, and a man in his late twenties. Both are rumpled, sheepish and showing unmistakable signs of having been manhandled.

"Caught in the community park." The officer informs Castiel at his curious glance.

"Doing...?" Castiel puts the take-out box aside.

"The nasty." The officer shoves the two men onwards, seating them in the corner.

Castiel closes his eyes for a second. Of course.

When this was all over, he was going to drink so much. Kill off a few mutinous brain cells.

Dean slams open his office door and glares at the arresting officer.

"What are they doing here?" He demands.

The officer shrugs. "Cells are full, couple of drunks and a whole bunch of guys from a sports bar, got into a fight I guess."

"Great." Dean growls. "What are we charging them with?"

"Public indecency, in the park by the elementary school. Together."

Castiel waits, patiently, for the explosion.

Dean looks at the two men, sizing them up, and Castiel can see the cogs turning.

"Disgusting." Dean mutters, then louder. "Should be ashamed of themselves."

"Fuck you." The younger guy murmurs. His elder 'shushes' him.

"What did you say?" Dean asks. The arresting officer beats a hasty retreat, not his hang ups, not his problem.

Castiel envies him.

He keeps his eyes trained on the scene unfolding in front of him.

"I said 'fuck you'." The kid repeats, louder. "Asshole." He adds.

Dean is across the room in an eye blink, pulling the handcuffed teenager off of the chair on which he sits. He wraps his fist in the teen's shirt.

"I am working on a very important investigation, trying to save some lives, I don't have time for your...filthy, degrading little pass times."

"Fascist." The kid grinds out.

Dean looks at him, and something about that look makes Castiel stand up, hesitantly moving closer. There's a fission in the air, violence as yet contained.

The kid spits in Dean's face.

Castiel doesn't get there fast enough, the teenager is already on the ground, his nose bleeding by the time he reaches Dean. He drags Dean away before he can kick the gasping teen in the stomach. The other handcuffed man is ashen, glaring impotently up at them.

"That's enough." Castiel says quietly, coming to stands between Dean and the others. He pushes the larger man away, and Dean looks at him, at the three of them. Castiel catches a violent flare of anger in the other man's eyes, and beneath it, a kind of trapped, helpless dissent.

_I'm not like you._

Dean's entire frame shouts it at the room, at the world, without a single sound. He bristles, and to all who'd care to look, it would seem like one good, American born, officer against his bent subordinate and two disgraced men looking for casual sex.

But Castiel knows the truth, they are all in this club together. Like it or not, fate put them there.

Dean storms out of the room, the door slamming so hard behind him that the frame rattles.

Castiel bends down to pick the teenager up.

"Get your fucking hands off me." The boy snarls, face masked in blood. "Bigot."

Castiel backs away, and he wants to tell them, both of them, that he isn't like Dean. He isn't anything like him.

Only, Dean came from him. Was born in his brain. So what does that make him? Who does that make him? And even if Sam created Dean, if he's just a piece of borrowed window dressing. Castiel had wanted him enough to debase himself. Whatever the moral high ground was, he'd lost it. He'd fallen to his knees on it and allowed himself to be used by a bigoted, closeted, violent, brute of a man.

And if he lived through the next second, the next minute until rescue came, then he would have to live with that.


	6. Chapter 6

_This chapter contains subject matter that is very sensitive and might be a trigger for some. I don't usually warn for plot twists but...this is something I don't want to blind side people with._

Tomorrow is the day of the shipment.

It's at the forefront of Castiel's mind when he wakes up, alone, on the futon in his apartment. One more days grace, and then it's his job to save Gabriel's life. To stop the awful events at the Holloway hotel.

He dresses, grey suit, white shirt, red braces, pink tie. Castiel doesn't even long for his simple black and blue suits anymore, he's all but forgotten them in the face of the oncoming trial.

At the precinct, everyone is busy working the Alistair case, Dean is for once out of his office, sitting on Castiel's desk with a cup of coffee in one hand, glaring at the case board. Castiel enters the office and can't fail to miss the way every other officer speedily vacates the immediate vicinity. He approaches his desk, determined to avoid Dean, he shuffles some papers and sits down.

This gives him an unfortunate level of eye contact with Dean's rear.

Fortunately, Dean sighs, stands up and turns to glare at him, rather than at the amassed evidence. Castiel glances up at Dean's eyes, ignoring the ever so tiny part of his mind that wants to keep staring at Dean's thighs, and the apex thereof, encased in their tight black suit pants. It appears that if one part of him is unaffected by the remembered tragedy occurring in a day's time, it is his libido.

"Yes?" Castiel asks briskly.

Dean's frown grows deeper, his eyes skittering over Castiel's face and down to the surface of the desk.

"About yesterday..." Dean says, attempting a sotto tone.

"What about it?"

"When those two public indecency charges came in..."

"And you savagely beat one of them? I vividly remember." Castiel looks up at him.

Dean looks chastened, a change in his demeanour that makes Castiel feel the slightest dart of triumph.

"Yeah...that...look, I just wanted to...make sure that you don't think I've got some kind of problem with you..."

"Just with every other faggot on the face of the earth?" Castiel puts in. "I'm exempt am I?"

"You're not like them." Dean mutters.

"No, I'm not." Castiel glares up at him. "And do you know why? Because if you ever, attempt something like that with me, I will shoot you, you understand?"

"Hey, I didn't mean it like..."

"No, I suppose you meant it as a reassurance." Castiel stands up and looks him firmly in the eye. "But it's not, and you? You need to grow up, and realise that you are exactly the same as every one of 'us' you persecute."

He snatches up a file and stalks towards the evidence board, leaving a red faced Dean to stand over the small desk, glaring at his empty seat.

Dean is not his concern – his insecurities and preoccupations are not Castiel's concern – he's here to do a job, not to marry Dean's ego with his sexuality.

Castiel catches himself, Dean isn't REAL for Christ's sake.

He turns back to what he knows.

Tomorrow a boatload of sex workers will arrive at the docks, the police know that, they knew that when it was real – when it was actually happening. But they had expected foreign girls, women from Russia or vulnerable parts of Africa. They had expected it, because it had happened before.

What they had found, what they would find – was a boat full of terrified children.

Castiel remembers what it was like on that boat, six years old and crammed below deck with his brother and fifteen other kids. They'd been taken from their families most of them, Castiel and Gabriel had been taken from their aunt's house, where they were staying. Jimmy hadn't been with them, and for the longest time, Castiel had thanked God for that.

They'd been stuck in that boat for days, and the insides had smelt of excrement and iodine, the air constantly full of surreptitious whimpering, because crying out loud brought punishment. Castiel has nightmares about that boat, about the night of Gabriel's death, and no therapist, no lover, had ever managed to rid him of the fear of it, the stink and violence of the weeks he spent in Alistair's 'care'.

Even now it makes him shiver, like the core of him is full of freezing sea water.

The facts are simple.

The shipment will be arriving tomorrow at one, but, while the police are at the docks, arresting the crew of the boat and freeing the captured would-be prostitutes, Alistair will have taken Gabriel to the Holloway Hotel.

Castiel too.

He remembers the room, with its brown curtains and tufted bedspread. How Alistair wouldn't stop touching his brother, mauling him about and stroking his skin. Castiel had been frightened, so very, very frightened. And Gabriel had fought, when Alistair had started on the young of the two boys. He had struck Alistair to spare Castiel the pain...and that's when Alistair had stabbed Gabriel.

The rest of the memories are bits and pieces, what seemed like an age of sitting against the wall, looking at Gabriel and the blood, all the blood in the world. Alistair had gone, somewhere, Castiel can't remember if he ran or if he had just decided to leave them there. But after a while, Castiel remembers someone telling him not to look. And at the station, a nice lady with gold earrings had put her arms around him, and told him that she'd be taking care of him from then on.

That woman had become his mother, and he'd been adopted into a new family, and into the police life, from then on.

But Gabriel, poor Gabriel, dead at eight years old. A bright, beautiful child, who smiles at Castiel from the one photo he has of him.

Not again. He will not let it happen again.

Castiel puts together his plan of action, tomorrow he will go directly to the Holloway hotel, and he will stake out the front to keep watch for his younger self, Gabriel and Alistair. Then, he will arrest, or, if necessary, shoot the man, and rescue the two children.

Then, perhaps he can return to Claire and to his life.

Then, maybe, he can let the ghost of Gabriel go.

Back at his desk, Castiel feels a chill go through him, he's so cold, all the time now. He wonders if it's a sign that his core temperature is going down, that he's dying. But maybe it's just the place where he was shot, maybe it's night there now.

The precinct is dark now, he's worked the whole day through on this case, this one case. But it doesn't feel like enough, like he's done enough to save his brother.

The radio on Bex's desk crackles to life.

"Please...don't..._Come on, be a good..._please...**Not my brother! Not my brother you bast...**Gabe!"

Castiel leaps up and crosses the room in a rush, grabbing the radio.

"Uncle Cas, please wake up..." Claire's voice. "Please, I miss you..."

"Please..." and it's his own voice, broken and small and terrified. "Please don't..."

The same word he'd said to the man who shot him. His killer.

Castiel's hand shakes on the radio, when Gabriel's voice returns, he dashes it on the floor. He can't stand it, hearing that last moment over and over again.

Just as the radio impacts, it stutters static, one last line leaving its tinny speaker.

"Don't look."

The radio shatters.

"Hey!" Dean's voice makes him start. "That was expensive equipment."

Castiel just looks at him.

"Jesus, what spooked you?" Dean catches himself. "You know what? I don't even care, after your little speech earlier I..."

"Dean..." Castiel cuts him off, frightened by the break in his own voice. "Come home with me." He hadn't known he was going to say it, but he's so cold, so scared, that he just wants someone warm and strong and solid to curl up with.

Dean looks at him, clearly surprised and wanting to, despite himself.

"Don't make me beg." Castiel asks, "Just come with me...and do things my way."

"Which way?"

"The emotionally literate way." Castiel feels a rising curl of fervour.

"You hate me." Dean reminds him.

"I don't know anybody else here." Castiel says, and he realises its true almost as soon as he does.

Dean inhales, as if searching for deception, Castiel can almost feel him waver.

"Fine." He hugs himself for warmth, positively vibrating with chill. "I can just..."

"I'll get my jacket." Dean mutters, stalking back to his office.

And Castiel waits, because, what else can he do?


	7. Chapter 7

In Dean's car, Castiel shivers, pressing up against Dean as much as he can while the other man drives them through the darkened streets. Castiel presses his face to the curve in Dean's neck, one hand falling to the larger man's strong thigh and kneading softly. Dean's hips hitch wards slightly, and he bites back a groan.

"We've got enough time." He mutters admonishingly.

Castiel slides his hand up, another shiver going through him as he cups Dean's crotch, fingers moulding to the shape of his cock.

"Enough is relative."

Dean glances at him, looking sideways and down at a man so pale he might have been a ghost.

"You're a strange guy, you know that?"

Castiel nods, shaking as he presses closer, palm rubbing up against Dean's stomach, reaching up to his chest, then back over his hips, returning to the stiffening evidence of his arousal. Dean jerks in his seat, one hand abandoning the gear shift to press down on Castiel's, rubbing the other man's palm harder across his cock.

"Take me home." Castiel strokes Dean's crotch under the weight of the other man's hand, leaning over to press his face against Dean's throat. He feels so warm, so alive, like it's Castiel who's imaginary, hollow. He can smell Dean's aftershave, sweat and leather. He can smell whisky and...nagging and so familiar...

"You smell like cinnamon." He mutters.

"Bex dropped some tea crap on my jacket." Dean arches into the kneading pressure of Castiel's hand. "..Shit...don't stop..."

Castiel licks the throbbing knot of Dean's pulse, feeling the heat of his skin, lapping it up. Dean's eyes slide shut for a millisecond, and he narrowly avoids hitting the car in front of them. Dean moans hoarsely, loving the feel of Castiel's practiced, teasing hand in his lap. He plucks it away reluctantly.

"Let's just get there in one piece, ok?" he pants.

Castiel's arm rests over Dean's waist, his whole body shivering.

"I'm cold." He mutters, half to himself, feeling tears crawl up the back of his throat. "Why am I so cold?"

Dean puts an arm around him, heedless of any need to change gear in the future. He holds Castiel closer.

"Dean..."

"What?" Dean turns the wheel one handed, looking ahead for a parking spot by Harvell's.

"I'm gay."

"I'd noticed that." Dean mutters, his body tensing as the label strikes home. He steers agitatedly into an available spot. "Can't get you to shut up about it..."

"No, because I'm gay." Castiel mutters, and even to himself his voice sounds slurred. He feels so cold, so tired that he could just...fall asleep. "And if I say it...if I...keep...saying it...maybe it'll break whatever part of me is still all...catholic and angry...then maybe you'll...stop...being such an...asshole to me." His teeth are chattering so much that he can barely get the words out.

Dean looks at him like he's crazy.

"You've got no say in what I say and do."

Castiel looks at him, feels his vision narrowing down.

"I wish I did."

"Yeah...bet you'd love that." Dean clenches his fists, cheeks flushed with arousal, with body heat. And Castiel moves a little closer despite the other man's aggressive posture, because he needs that heat like he needs air. "Marching in your proud, back-biter parade."

Castiel covers Dean's mouth with his hand.

Dean instantly jerks away and tries to hit out at him, but Castiel blocks him in with the sheer desperation in his pressing body, leaning against Dean and touching him gently.

"Take me upstairs...and shut up."

Dean glares at him.

"I mean it." Castiel strengthens his voice out of sheer force of will. "Any more of your...bullshit...well, if you're 'nothing like me'...then you won't want to fuck me, will you?"

He can sense that he's won, the way Dean's body goes tense with indecision, anger, and pure desire. The need to get some relief from the latter inevitably wins out.

They go into the almost deserted bar and upstairs, thankfully without seeing Ellen or Jo.

Castiel fumbles with his key and Dean takes it from him impatiently, pressing up against the smaller man's back as he slides the key home and opens the apartment door. Castiel leans back against Dean's body, feeling heat lick through him. He can't help the tiny sound of pleasure that escapes him, but when Dean's arm goes around his waist, he thinks that maybe it hasn't hurt the admittedly pretty thin atmosphere between them.

Inside, with the door closed, Dean tries to push Castiel towards the couch, getting him as far as bumping his knees on the edge before Castiel twists away, shaking his head. He plucks Dean's hand up in his own and pulls him towards the bedroom door.

Dean resists.

"Not in there."

"Why not?" Castiel pulls him again and Dean stays rooted to the spot. "It's warmer. In bed."

"This isn't..." Dean bites back the words he so clearly wants to say. "I don't go to bed with guys."

"You don't go to bed with them, don't kiss them..." Castiel feels like something made of cold air is trying to swallow him whole. "Have you even done it face to face?"

Dean looks down, eyes practically burning holes in the floor.

"No, of course not." Castiel feels bitter and faint. "Wouldn't want to lose that precious pride of yours, acting like the thing you're fucking is actually a person..."

"Shut up." Dean practically spits.

Castiel looks at him, and with all the recklessness of a man who's already dead in all ways that count, he says;

"Make me."

When Dean throws Castiel up against the wall, he moans, because Dean is furnace hot, all his anger and rage burning like compressed coals of resentment. He can't help the hands that pull Dean closer, the way his body convulses, wrapping around Dean's tightly.

And if Dean shivers when Castiel slides his hands up under his shirt, if he tenses at the touch of hands that seem carved from ice, it's not out of fear or dislike. Because Castiel's touch is like winter rain on a house fire, and it feels so good he can barely stay standing.

When Castiel's hand clutches the back of Dean's neck, cold fingers playing on his searing skin, Dean doesn't flinch away, even though he knows what's coming.

When Castiel kisses him, he feels it all the way down to his insides.

Dean has never kissed a man before, always avoided it, always pulled away – and usually it wasn't an issue, not with the other guy on his hands and knees getting done. But now that it's happening, finally, it feels...Dean presses closer and moans when Castiel's tongue touches his. Rough and quick and deep, exactly as they'd fucked before, only now he can feel every inch of Castiel's body plastered to his.

When they part, Castiel is gasping for air, his face flushed slightly pink, mouth reddened. He shivers again and puts his hands on Dean, urging him towards the bedroom.

Dean's goes without a word.

Inside the bedroom is small, box like, with a double bed taking up all the space. It's got red and black striped sheets on it, and Castiel barely cares. He and Dean shunt the bedroom door closed and maul each other against it, fleeting heat touches Castiel's skin and he presses closer to it.

Dean's jacket hits the door with a thud, his shirt following, Castiel removes his own suit jacket and shirt, shivering as his hands drop to Dean's belt. He tilts his head up, and this time it's Dean who kisses him, mouth wet and warm and urgent.

Castiel pushes Dean's slacks down, fingers finding the generous shape of his arousal through his shorts, Dean makes a rough sound at the back of his throat, kisses Castiel again. Kicking out of his pants and boots. He's taking to it like he was built to do this. And it's almost like what Castiel is used to – to the way people in his present has touched him and kissed him.

But Dean is all sharp edges and sore spots, and something about that, the danger of it, makes it so much better when it's going smoothly, almost effortlessly.

"Lie down." Castiel murmurs, backing away, still mostly dressed. Dean is like a piece of statuary, a pin-up from Castiel's teenage predilection for top shelf magazines. Black jockey shorts plumped out in exactly the right way, well muscled, tanned and breathless.

But the nervousness in his eyes is all human, natural and real.

"If you think you're fucking me..."

"Just lie down, under the sheets." Castiel says softly, toeing off his shoes.

Dean is frozen in indecision for a few seconds more before he lifts the corner of the duvet and folds his perfect body away under the covers. Castiel takes off his socks and pants, leaving his underwear on. He glances at Dean, noting the sweat on the other man's skin, the flush to it.

He climbs into bed and Dean rolls on top of him, the heat is so fierce that it almost hurts.

They rut together, cotton growing damp between them, their combined fluid raising a musky scent under the sheets. In the dark, Castiel can't see the way Dean looks at him, he can't tell if he's disgusted or appreciative, and that is at least a comfort. He slides his hands down the back of Dean's underwear, groping unrestrainedly, Dean grinds down, head and shoulders lifting up – Castiel feels ardent lips brush his forehead, Dean's mouth slack and breathy as their hips rub together.

It's only a matter of minutes before their both panting too hard to speak, limbs turning limp and warm, bodies tensing. Dean backs off reluctantly, sliding out of his underwear and dragging Castiel's off of him. They meet again in a long, broad press of hot skin, Castiel's own body chill to the touch against Dean's burning hot limbs.

It's only now that Castiel gets a good look at Dean, and he's surprised to find the heretofore resistant man almost completely undone; Dean's mouth is blushed cherry red, his eyes closed, body loose and pliant. He's lost to the sensation of another male body fully bared for him, and it occurs to Castiel that this is probably the first time that Dean has felt this.

He gropes blindly for the side table, where he knows there' s a first aid kit, complete with a tube of savlon.

Dean's hand stretches out to meet him, tracing down his arm and tweaking the tube from his fingers. Green eyes meet his for a second, and then Dean's gaze falls to his mouth, he leans in and kisses Castiel hungrily, breaking off to rub his cheek against the side of Castiel's, lips trailing down his throat to his collar bone. Dean's hips shove once, hard, against Castiel's own, and he gets the message, spreading his legs wider.

The first of Dean's fingers enters him so suddenly that Castiel forgets how to breathe, throws his head back and chokes a moan up towards the ceiling. Dean's whole body moves as he thrusts his finger in and out, his hips rubbing against the mattress as he presses his face to Castiel's neck.

The second finger is just as brutal, and Castiel gasps, one hand coming up to cup the back of Dean's head, fingers twisting into his hair.

On the third, Castiel squeezes his eyes shut and moans, shutting out the sound of the heat monitor that bleeps frantically nearby.

Castiel shivers, body uncontrollably cold now, despite Dean's body moving against his own, the hot snatch of his palm as his hand undulates, pushing his fingers in and out of Castiel's body. Castiel can barely move for the shaking, and relies on Dean to push his thighs up and apart, settling over him with only the briefest moments hesitation.

Castiel wraps his arms around Dean and cries out as he's split open, feeling warmth force its way into his insides.

He opens his eyes only when Dean starts to move, and then he can't look away. He's trapped, rooted to the spot by a man who he despises, a man who he made up...and he can't help but hold him tighter, move with him, because it feels so good, and he can't help but look into Dean's supposedly illusory eyes, and see everything that the other man is thinking.

So much, so many thoughts – they can't be fake, can't be made up.

Dean, at least in that moment, feels real.

"Cas..."Dean's face contracts in conflict, his body moves regardless, hounding down its pleasure swiftly. "Cas..." And Castiel knows that there' s too much that could follow his name, too much for Dean to say. He reaches up, and pulls him down, kissing him as hard as he can. Frantic beeps fill his ears and he ignores them in favour of the pleasure coursing through his body.

They come undone together, Castiel' s body curling up and thrusting to meet Dean's own. Flashes of white flicker in his vision and he can feel himself tensing, unravelling. A high whine amps up, and Castiel wonders what it is, even as he's thrown into orgasm, crying out and trembling on the bed as heat sweeps through him, his heart pounds and...

"_Clear!"_

He jolts again, and Dean shudders on top of him, coming deep and hard with a low groan. Hips moving in a series of languid circles as he spends.

One, long, perilous shriek fills the silence, cutting through their satisfied whimpers and gasps for air.

Castiel feels everything fall away.

He blinks.

1

2

3

4

5

The beeping resumes.

Dean rolls over onto the bed, chest still rising and falling unsteadily as he pulls the sheet over himself.

"Fuck...that was..." he swallows, breath coming uneven and ragged.

"Yeah." Castiel looks up at the ceiling, feeling how closed he'd just been to death, how good it had felt just over the edge.

He trembles.

He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to die.

But...somewhere, in that confused of pre-orgasm bliss, he'd thought of having Dean close forever, of being with him, here in this bed, forever.

And nothing else had mattered.

He couldn't want this. He couldn't want to stay here. Not for Dean of all people.

What about Claire? His whole life? That was real, that was what he wanted.

It just didn't make him feel as alive as he'd just felt – with his heart arresting and Dean straining inside of him.

Castiel rolls onto his side and presses close to Dean, leaning his head on his chest.

"Stay here...until morning?" He whispers.

Dean stiffens.

"Ellen'll see me leave."

Castiel holds him closer.

"Tomorrow is important...I think I might be leaving here if it goes right...and I can't be alone tonight." Castiel tells him.

Dean is silent, but he doesn't move, so Castiel lets himself drift towards sleep. Seconds before he goes under he hears Dean murmur,

"You're not going anywhere..." and, even fainter. "I still need you."


	8. Chapter 8

Castiel wakes up, and the first things he sees are two pairs of underwear on the floor by the bed.

He blinks, because, this isn't his bedroom. The underwear doesn't look like his, he can smell unfamiliar aftershave, and his head is killing him. He closes his eyes and rolls onto his back, colliding with the body that had been lying against his back.

It grunts tiredly and sighs against his neck.

Had he gone home with someone?

A hot, heavy arm slides over his waist, the hand attached to it palming his stomach sleepily. Castiel leans back against the stranger despite himself. He's cold, a little too cold to be comfortable, which is weird, because he's tucked up tight in bed.

Then he remembers.

This is his room, in his mind, and he's in bed with...

Dean pulls away and sits up.

Castiel looks up at him in the shadowy pre-dawn, where Dean's hair is a mess of soft brown spikes, and his face is wrinkled in a confused and distasteful moue.

"Shower." He mutters, shoving the duvet aside and dropping his bare feet to the floor. Castiel curls up under the covers, watching with a slight twist of regret as Dean pads out of the bedroom, intent on finding the bathroom and washing away the remains of their night together.

As soon as Dean's naked body disappears from view, Castiel shifts across to lie in the warm impression his body has left. He curls into it shamelessly, needing the warmth more than dignity.

He has no idea why Dean's rejection hurts so much now, when it's all Dean has ever offered him. Still, it makes him feel cold in the figurative sense, as well as physically.

Distantly, the shower starts to run.

Castiel closes his eyes.

He must sleep, because he's jolted awake again when Dean sits down on the bed, dragging a fleece blanket into his lap in a half hearted effort at decency.

"We have to be at work in an hour." He mutters.

Castiel can't think of any response to that, so he doesn't say anything.

Dean sighs, rolling his neck and shoulders. "Mind if I..." he picks awkwardly at the edge of the duvet. "It's cold out here."

Castiel lifts the covers and lets Dean slide underneath. The larger man doesn't look at him, but holds his head awkwardly away from the pillow, keeping his wet hair off of it.

Castiel moves his arm up, under Dean's head, feeling the warm, wet touch of the other man's clean hair in the crook of his elbow.

Dean waves for a second, then relaxes.

"This doesn't..." Dean starts.

Castiel can think of a few things that Dean might be about to say -

...Change anything.

...Mean anything.

"...feel weird, does it?" is what Dean actually comes out with, right before Castiel feels his fingers sliding over his chest, Dean's whole arm following to hold him in an awkward hug.

"You're not...freaking out?"

"I'm freaking out." Dean mutters. "I just...I'm tired, and it's early...and it was...kinda nice to wake up with someone." His eyes look empty, like all the riotous, furious emotion Castiel had seen there last night has burnt itself out. "That doesn't mean..."

"I know...it's not happening again."

Dean's body sags, defeated and disappointed. "I don't want to lose my job...their respect...I can't...be like you."

Castiel feels a sting at the insult.

"One day, practically everyone here is going to be like me, they won't have to choose between their jobs, their friends and...for some, it won't even matter if they do have to, even now."

Dean's face is a mask, his jaw stiff and defiant, his eyes downcast.

"...someday you're going to love someone enough." Castiel says.

Dean sits up and draws his knees up, resting his hands on them, arms blocking Castiel out. "Well, it's ok for you – going back to wherever the hell you came from..."

"It's far from perfect." Castiel assures him.

"Yeah, but no one's going to...smash up your car, or put a brick through your window, or..."

"Beat you up?" Castiel says, pointedly.

Dean flushes with anger and humiliation.

"That's not the same..."

"No, it's not. It's worse – because you're not just pig ignorant and malicious like them – you're hurting people just like you...and me." Castiel sighs, noting Dean's rigid posture and defensively tensed shoulders. "Let's not, do this – ok? I'm tired of...fighting you, I just want to go home...and that means I have things to do."

He slides out of bed, braving the cold to find underwear and a shirt, suit and tie. Dean watches him as he assembles his clothes and Castiel ignores him, padding away towards the bathroom to shower.

When he gets back, Dean is exactly where he left him, having made no move to get dressed. He looks up at Castiel as he renters the room, a blue towel around his waist.

"What?" Castiel says, waspish in his discomfort.

"I'm not...ignorant." Dean says.

Castiel sighs. "Fine. Forget it, now can we please get..."

"I'm good at my job, I know everything I need to know...and if you stopped treating me like some...backwards hick...then maybe you'd appreciate that."

Castiel is surprised, he wasn't aware that Dean had picked up on his scorn and disbelief, choosing rather to see it as hostility towards him personally.

"I'm sorry if you think I..." Castiel cuts himself short. "This is ridiculous, I'm not apologising to you , you're not even..."

"What?"

"Never mind."

"No seriously, I'm not even what?"

Castiel looks at him, and finds that, though he really wants to say 'real' he can't. Stupid it might be, but he doesn't want to upset Dean right now.

"...nice, to me." He says instead, lamely. "You've been an ass."

"Maybe I'd be nice if you let me do it my way." Dean mutters. "'stead of always pushing at me."

Castiel wonders if that's true. Whether, if he'd let Dean move at his own pace, this morning might have been an almost regretful parting, rather than an awkward morning after. But, he has the feeling that he's mistaken. Dean would never have made a move on him without all the dislike that circled them. He could never care about another man the way Castiel could – it just wasn't in his character.

As if part of his brain is trying to prove him wrong, Dean looks up at him nervously.

"Cas...I want to see you...more, again." Dean says awkwardly.

"I'm leaving..."

"No, you're not..." Dean catches himself and looks at Castiel, his expression nervous.

Castiel feels a stab of anxiety.

"Yes. I. Am." He says harshly. "I'm not staying here...I don't know if this is some kind of...near death, go in to the light, trick...but I'm not falling for it." He stops to breathe, looking at Dean, with his slightly drying hair and his literally naked desire, his expression a mixture of rejection, hurt and self loathing.

"I'm not falling for _you_." Castiel says, and he turns, leaving the apartment, and Dean's protests, behind him.

He has work to do.

(-*-)

The Holloway hotel is on the edge of the city, a four story converted factory that offered cheap rooms in the eighties, and had been torn down by the late nineties. It was an ugly brick building with blocky letters affixed over the stained red and white awning out front. The parking lot at the side was almost empty when Castiel pulled up in his rental car.

This was the place Alistair had taken him and Gabriel, he remembered it clearly, and it had been listed the police report that he'd read a few years ago.

All he had to do, was wait for the right car, a blue Cortina with a taped up back window, and stop Alistair from taking him and Gabriel up to the hotel room. He had his gun, he could shoot the man if necessary.

His brother was not going to die today. He'd make sure of it.

Castiel sat and waited, knowing that by now Dean would be at the docks, discovering the children and making arrests amongst the crew. That would all happen as history said it had, Castiel didn't need to interfere.

One more reason not to be around Dean.

He couldn't help the way his mind decided to go, back to that morning and the conversation they'd had. Dean infuriated and unnerved him by turns. Castiel had thought him a standard caricature, a symptom of his upbringing. But Dean appeared to have some depth – sorrow for his brother's death, fear over his potential outing as a gay man, anger at himself for being afraid, resentment at the people who made him afraid, yet a desperate desire for their approval, anger at the men he was trying to arrest, but fear that he was worse than them, for lying, for being a fraud...Dean was complex, and alive with contradictions.

Castiel leans against the door of the rental, resting his head as the driver's seat mangles his back. Dean had been adamant that he wasn't leaving. What did the other man know? Was he a part of the world that had Castiel trapped? Was he the reason he couldn't leave?

Too many questions. Too few answers. Castiel focused once more on the hotel's front door. This was the way home. This was the thing he needed most from this world – to rewrite his black history, to save his brother and his younger self.

Castiel watches the front door for two hours. Very few people enter, and only the previous nights guests emerge, pale and badly shaven businessmen en route to somewhere else. One man and a stringy blond, another woman with two children, both girls, and a large suitcase. A divorce in progress.

Castiel waits, painfully conscious of time slipping by. He can't remember the exact times, but it's almost mid morning, surely they had already gotten to the hotel by then?

He can't think. Can't calculate it. And in his mind there is only that one terrible, bloody memory, endlessly circulating.

But what came before?

The boat, the dark and stifling urine scented air, then Alistair taking them to the car...the car...which he had driven, with them in, Castiel remembers crying, Gabriel trying to shush him before they were punished...then they stopped, and Alistair had gotten out, taken them out...taken them to...

Castiel's heart doesn't so much stop as die, turning to ice in his chest.

The back door.

_The hotel's back door_.

He scrabbles out of the car, intent on reaching the hotel.

That's when everything goes wrong.

Or, to be more accurate, that's when things start to change.

The impala bursts around the corner and nearly mows him down as he crosses the road. Castiel dives out of the way, towards the hotel, as Dean comes to a screeching halt and climbs out of the car, leaving it in the middle of the road.

Two patrol cars pull up behind him, uniformed officers climbing out, along with Chuck and Rufus.

Castiel doesn't think, just bolts into the hotel, shoving the door open and running into the lobby.

"Cas!" Dean yells behind him, but he doesn't stop.

In the lobby, there are several people, desk clerk, cleaners, porter...Castiel runs past them and towards the stairs, catching a snatch of their conversation as he passes.

"...reported it as soon as..."

"...blood came through the..."

"...light fitting's full of it..."

"...from room 309..."

His heart is beating so hard that he thinks it'll break his ribs. Castiel sprints up the stairs, finds the third floor and counts back from room 315. Of course, the blood leaked down into the room below, that was why the police had...

_Please, please let it not be too late..._he prays, even though he knows that it must be.

Sense is lost to him now, all he has if grief.

He finds to door, locked. Throws his shoulder against it and bursts it open. It thwaks against the internal wall dully. And then...

It's all there, live, in Technicolor.

Gabriel's body, so much smaller to him now that he's an adult, his unruly brown hair sticky with blood, the tufted bedspread soaked with it, his short, pudgy arms and legs pin wheeled wide, the knife on the floor, the hole in his brother's side.

Castiel's hand clamps across his mouth, and he muffles his own strangled sob. Crossing the room on shaking legs, he touches his fingers to his brother's cherubic face, finding the skin still warm.

Too late, too late by minutes, seconds...too late.

He takes the bed spread and pulls it around the naked, limp body, bending over it as his body slumps, helpless tears sliding down his face. His brother, eight years old forever, is heavy in his arms, like so much meat.

Gabriel is dead, dead because of him. Again.

He barely hears the scuffles of the police arriving. Barely notices the touch of Chuck's hand on his shoulder, Rufus' muttered 'Leave him boss...come on..." They take the body, which he's clutched in his arms without thinking, and lower it back to the bed, pulling him away. He barely hears them talking, wondering aloud what's happened to him.

But he does hear Dean.

And he turns, looking across the room, to where Dean is on his knees, pulling a balled up, pale boy into his arms, letting him bury his face in his tea-stained suit jacket, and whispering,

"Don't look...it's ok...it'll be ok."

And that's when Castiel's knees crumple, and he falls to the ground. His brother's blood still on his hands.


	9. Chapter 9

_I got all kinds of distracted with work, and with advent fics here's a short update to bridge the way into the next chapter. _

_ALSO – a note to say that my second novel 'INK' is coming out TOMORROW on the Kindle store as an ebook, and on as a paperback. It's 'A moment to be real' with extra content, and reworked existing content. Proceeds go to funding my attempt to get to the woman I love – so, I'd be super-glad if you went over there tomorrow and bought a copy _

_I'll be posting links on my twitter – JollySnidge. _

Dean carries the boy out of the hotel room, downstairs and out to the impala. He's draped his suit jacket around the almost naked child, and the boy doesn't resist, or even blink as he's carefully placed in the passenger seat.

Castiel is still blurred by horror, confusion and fear, but he has regained conscious enough to be led out to the car by Chuck and Rufus. The three of them sit in the back of the impala, and there's deathly silence all the way back to the station.

Castiel watches his younger self – unblinking, blank-eyed, a bruise growing on his cheek, a light spray of blood over his face. His hair is filthy, his nails too are torn, blackened with dirt. He's thin and pale, and his eyes look huge as they look down at the glove compartment, not out of the windows, not at the other people in the car, just on and on at the plastic lever on the glove compartment.

How close had he been when Gabriel was murdered? Castiel can't remember.

He can't remember what it felt like to be in this car the first time, when it was real.

Had it been real? Had he sat here in a car with Dean Winchester, Rufus, Chuck...had he blocked it out because of the tragedy he had just witnessed? He remembered almost nothing from that day. Nothing whatsoever.

Could it have happened this way?

Had Dean been the first human being to come for him? To save him from the sight of Gabriel's body?

Had Dean saved his life?

He looks at the man who might have been his saviour, currently driving in the seat in front of him.

Dean's whole body is a wall of tension and anger, but Castiel the child seems unafraid of him. When Dean parks the car by the precinct and gets out to lift Castiel from the car, the boy goes willingly, his bare feet dangling limply, his dark head against Dean's chest, bruise coloured eyelids closing.

Castiel follows them, he can see his breath in the police station, flowing from his mouth in a white plume. No one looks at him, all eyes on are on Dean, and Castiel begins to wonder if he's dead, a ghost in even this fractured, hallucinatory place. Maybe his heart stopped when he saw Gabriel dead like that.

Maybe this is hell.

Dean takes the child into his office and pulls the shades, then emerges and takes Bex to one side, telling her to go get some water and something warm from the lost and found box.

Then he walks towards Castiel, and for a second the dark haired man thinks that Dean will just pass through him as if he's vapour.

But Dean's hand lands firmly on his arm, and he guides Castiel to his the storage room at the rear of the station, where old desks and chairs are kept.

"Sit." Dean directs, and Castiel sits in a chair. Dean puts his leather jacket around his shoulders, and kneels down in front of him.

"I'll get Bex to bring you by some coffee...maybe some whisky too."

"What are you?" Castiel asks quietly.

"Right now?" Dean takes a step back. "Needed. I'll go check on the kid."

He leaves, and Castiel leans exhaustedly against the wall behind him. Somewhere, there is another him in need of comfort. Comfort which he hasn't it in him to give.

Dean returns sometime later, once Castiel has drunk down two cups of bitter as mud coffee with whisky splashed into them. He feels warmer, a little unsteady, but no longer as aching and empty as he had an hour earlier.

Dean comes to stand opposite him.

"How are you feeling?"

Castiel looks up at him, feeling the world yawn hungrily around him, an abyss.

"What did I do wrong?" He asks, his voice a soft rasp, a piece of paper falling to the ground.

"Well..." Dean leans back against a shelving unit. "You didn't have back up...if I'd known about it I could have covered the rear of the hotel...but, then I wasn't all that receptive to ideas...I just wanted to get the bastard...why didn't you tell me it was kids? On that boat?"

"I had to save him." Castiel murmurs. "I needed it to be me...me alone..."

"I'm so sorry it didn't work out." Dean says softly. "Shit...I'm sorry you had to see that, I've been doing this...a lot longer than you and..." Dean's face scrunches. "I don't think I'll ever get him out of my head."

"You won't...I never will." Castiel whispers.

Dean looks at him.

"I failed." Castiel looks up at him, and his bright blue eyes are haloed in tears. "Is that it? Am I done?"

Dean's face remains set.

"Am I dead now?"

Dean wets his dry lips, removing his hands from his pants pockets. He sighs, and Castiel feels his heart pound. It's over. The whole fucking circus that his brain had inflicted on him. Neurones are firing their last, his brain cells are dying. For all he knows this room is his last creation. It's just him and Dean, and nothing else.

"You realise you're not going anywhere?" Dean says finally. "I can't...I can't go through this, watch you go through this...and then just let you go off where I can't..." He falters. "I need to be with you."

"Is it up to you?"

"Yeah...yeah, I think it is." Dean rubs a hand over his eyes. "Christ...I can't...this is just too fucking awful."

"I don't want to go." Castiel says, softly. "I thought...I thought I needed to get home, get back to Claire but...that was never an option, was it? Either way...I was always going to..." He blinks, dislodging a bead of water from his lashes. "to die."

Dean drops to his knees in front of him, wrapping his arms around Castiel and holding on to him.

"Hard day." Dean murmurs. "It's been a...hard day...and I don't think you should drink any more."

Castiel lets loose a few more tears, a sob hitching in his throat. He just wishes it would end, that it would all go dark. Death. And he wouldn't have to feel anything else.

A terrible thought occurs to him, and he pulls suddenly away from Dean.

"Do...do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

He looks pleadingly into the other man's face. Dean reaches his hand up and strokes Cas's hair.

"I know how hard this is...but...it's the job, ok? It'll get better."

In that moment, Castiel realises that Dean, confusing, vital, aggravating Dean...is not an instrument of death.

He's just a man.

A man with no idea who the boy in his office is. No idea who Gabriel was. No notion of where Castiel is from, or what he once was.

Once more, Castiel has no idea whether this world is real or not.

But all he wants is to be in Dean's arms.

He lunges forwards, his mouth finding Dean's charged with heat, his hands clutch at the larger man's back, and Dean pulls Castiel further into his arms, holding him tightly. They kiss fiercely, with all the fervour of dying men, matched in strength and despair.

Dean finally pulls away, snatching air into his lungs.

"I thought this wasn't happening again." He says quietly.

"Don't leave me." Castiel sets his jaw, eyes pleading. "Not now...not today."

Dean kisses him again, dragging him up, hands groping blindly, possessive and explorative. Castiel grasps back, trying to block the image of Gabriel from his mind.


	10. Chapter 10

_ALSO – a note to say that my second novel 'INK' is on the Kindle store as an ebook. It's 'A moment to be real' with extra content, and reworked existing content, I'd be super-glad if you went over there tomorrow and bought a copy _

_Also, my hawk man references are wrong, I know, but it was a plot point :P_

Castiel doesn't see his younger self again.

He makes special effort to avoid the young boy, unable to face the experience, and also afraid that it might cause some kind of schism, a catastrophe that would destroy the world around him.

He did however, realise something quite significant.

When Bex came to take away his accumulated mugs of whisky-coffee, and as Dean leapt away from him as if burnt when the door opened. While the senior officer curled needy fingers into his pants pockets, turned his flaming face away from his clueless secretarial officer, Castiel noticed that Bex was wearing gold earrings. Very familiar gold earrings.

And then he remembered.

The nice woman with gold earrings, who had taken him home, and who had looked after him with her boyfriend while efforts had been made to track down his parents. He had lived with Becky and Chuck for a few years, and they were in most of his earliest memories, the peaceful time after Gabriel's death, and his nightmare on board that boat.

Of course, Castiel's parent's were gone. His relatives were scattered, his siblings had all been parcelled out to relatives, and it was one of his aunts that eventually cared enough to try and find him.

He can't quite make himself speak, but he's so incredibly grateful right now, for Becky, for what she and Chuck had done for him. Taking care of him as he'd gone through the trauma of losing his brother, and igniting in him the desire to join the police force. They had shaped his life, and they had brought him here.

That's when he finally puts it together.

Not the mystery of where he is, whether it's real or somehow fictional...but he does realise exactly how he got here.

He remembers now, with the memories of his childhood sharpened so much by being in that room again. He remembers exactly, and to the smallest detail, the face that had loomed over him as he'd lain, naked and afraid on a hotel bed. The lopsided, thin lipped mouth, the pointed face, pale, creased skin, the way his hair had fallen into his eyes.

Alistair.

The gunman from his present, who had shot him in the head, sending him to this place.

He feels sick. So sick. Alistair had ruined his life, not once, but twice – first stealing his brother, his innocence away from him. And then, years later, the same man had taken his life.

Dean waits until the door closes at Bex's back before he lets out a sigh.

"That was too close."

Castiel looks up at him.

"This all just...too much." He says, thinking of all the things he has seen today, all the overlapping, circular details of his life, that, if they are real and true, have had him trapped and caught up on a self fulfilling prophesy of misery.

"Yeah...well, you're the one who can't decide if you want me to fuck off, or just fu..."

Castiel glares at him. "How are you even like this? Everyone else, everyone – Rufus, Chuck...they're all...ahead of you – they don't care as much. If they saw what you did to that kid...they'd have a problem with it, and you know it. They joke, they're assholes...but they don't hate people like us."

"Great, another lecture." Dean's brows draw together. "In case you didn't notice, I'm good at my job, today I rescued a bunch of kids from being raped by bastard..."

"Paedophiles."

"And I guess 'cause you know the right word for that...that makes you better than me?"

Castiel sighs.

"I wish those kids had been left on that boat." Dean says quietly, after a long silence. "Then we could have got them all out...I can't imagine what it was like for him, seeing his brother die."

"It just didn't work out that way."

"Reminded me of Sam, that's all."

Castiel looks at him. "I lost my brother too."

"Hurts doesn't it?"

"Like nothing else."

Dean sighs. "When I trashed that dealer's car, the one that tried to run him down. I thought I'd saved his life, that I'd always be there to save him...then I wasn't. He drowned in a river, all alone."

"Sam knew you cared about him, that you would do anything for him."

"How do you know?" Dean's voice is combative, but rough with grief.

"He told me...we were...sort of friends, before his accident." Castiel glances away from Dean's hard eyes. "You were the best brother he could have had, he knew that."

"You were friends with my brother." Dean rolls the words around his mouth. "Sam would have been your type."

"He was a friend, intelligent, eloquent...sympathetic." Castiel enunciates carefully. "I imagine you two clashed a lot when working together."

"Least he could admit when I was right." Dean glares at him, but his eyes soften a little. "He had the same deal as you – always telling me I was doing things wrong, that I pig ignorant and...what was it?...prejudiced. But he knew me – knew I wasn't corrupt, like so many of the others, that I was fair when it counted. Just like I knew he wasn't such a pussy when it came down to actually doing his job. He could leave all that care and share crap at the precinct - crack shot as well."

Castiel smiles slightly, touched despite himself by Dean's clear adoration of his younger brother.

"What about yours?" Dean asks gruffly.

"My brother?" Castiel's smile fades. "He died when he was a child...he was eight."

Dean looks down, but offers no false comfort.

"He was...always so much more adventurous than me, always ready to drop everything to go and play pirates or batman and robin. He had a sweet tooth like nothing else, I think he was permanently hyper...and once he beat up four ten year olds, just because they took my hawk man action figure and pulled the wings off."

"That's what big brother's do."

"And little brothers appreciate it." Castiel says softly.

They sit in silence, or rather, Castiel sits, and Dean leans against the shelving.

Realisations come in threes, and it's a fact that is little appreciated.

Castiel's mind, trained by college, by the force, by the time he spent with Quantico - has been trying to make connections, to work out the way this world works, since his arrival. For all the time he's been here, he's been trying to work out if it's real or not, if he's dreaming, or if he's actually travelled through time.

But, it's as he's thinking of hawk man of all things, that he actually works it out.

He remembers an issue about an alternate reality, where many Thanagarians had been imprisoned in traps, and entered into the same alternate universe.

He looks at Dean -Dean who is so infuriatingly real and full – his character and personality too much, too complete to be a figment of his own dry imagination.

And Chuck, Rufus...this whole world, and what Sam had seen, almost exactly the same thing. There are things that Sam hadn't told him, but which Dean had, that made sense. Things Castiel could not have imagined.

"Dean...when were you born?"

Dean frowns at him. "Why?"

"Just...when were you born?"

"I don't know...thirty six years ago."

"But what year?"

"...'46"

"You had to think about that."

"Well, when were you born, smartass?"

"1976."

Dean glares at him. "You're fucking nuts."

"When were you born? What was your earliest memory?"

"You're cracked...and I'm off the clock." Dean tells him, checking his watch. "I'm going home."

Castiel sighs.

"But...I uh...I might be going to Ellen's...tonight, once I've changed."

"I don't think you'll ever change."

Dean fixes his eyes on his. "You going to let me in?"

Castiel sighs. "I suppose."

"I'm not bringing you flowers."

Castiel gives him a withering look. "Just...show up, and don't be an ass...it's the wrong kind of day."

Dean looks chastened. "Yeah."

Castiel makes his way home, realising when he gets there that he's still wearing Dean's jacket. His flat is quiet and dark and cold. Castiel turns the soft lamp on, and changes into a clean pair of suit pants and a white shirt, bundling today's clothes into his hamper.

Somewhere his younger self is being taken care of by Becky and Chuck. He's glad.

Castiel takes out a tumbler, and after a second, takes out another, putting them on the table by the sofa. He finds a bottle of scotch and pours himself some, drinking it down slowly. He feels slightly warmer with it in his belly, though he is drinking on a stomach empty of everything but whisky and coffee. He wants to be reasonably warm and unfeeling when Dean arrives.

If Dean arrives.

It's sad that his one source of comfort is man who may or may not hate him, who may or may not show.

He waits for two hours, reading a magazine that reads more like a history book than entertainment. After a while he drinks another glass of scotch and decides to go to bed, alone.

That's when someone knocks on the door.

For a moment it occurs to him that he shouldn't answer, that he's better than this. But then he finds himself on his feet, approaching the door. He opens it and glares at the man leaning in his doorway.

"I still have your jacket." He says. "You can take it and go."

Dean sighs, and Castiel can smell alcohol on his breath. Now that it occurs to him to look at Dean thoroughly, he can see that the lieutenant looks...dishevelled, his eyes harsh and anxious.

"Dean?"

"1919"

"What?"

Dean sags in the doorway.

"I was born in 1919."


	11. Chapter 11

_My second novel 'INK' is on the Kindle store as an ebook. _

Castiel stands frozen in the doorway.

This cannot be happening, and yet, it is. Dean looks at him, eyes heavy with shock and the effects of his drinking.

_1919_

Castiel steps aside, ushering Dean into the apartment. In the time it takes for him to close the door, Dean has crossed the room and helped himself to a glass of scotch, downing it in two quick gulps.

"How do you know?" Castiel asks.

"I just...know." Dean looks at him. "Shit, you asked me...when I got to thinking about it, it was like a...wall, a dam in my head just cracked – and I could remember."

"Remember?"

"I was shot." Dean says quietly, disbelievingly. His face is a mask of pain, haunted and afraid. "I remember...someone broke into one of the big houses in town...I shouldn't have gone alone, but I did...and they shot me."

Castiel takes a step forward without meaning to.

"Some, asshole shot me in the back of the head." Dean says, numbly.

There's nothing he can say that can ease the pain he knows Dean must be feeling. Castiel has felt it too. The total, all consuming grief for a life that had been taken away too soon.

Still, Castiel moves forwards and picks up the scotch bottle, pouring Dean another generous measure before sitting down on the couch.

Dean plumps down on the seat beside him, one had loosening his time, the other raising the glass to his lips.

"I was shot in 2011." Castiel says quietly.

Dean glances at him, lowering the glass with a shaking hand.

"What?"

"I was shot, in the head, in 2011...I woke up on that boat, with no idea where I was. I only knew you because..." Castiel falters.

"How? How did you know my name?" Dean looks like he's at the end of a rapidly fraying rope, and so Castiel lets the words out on a breath before he can change his mind.

"Sam told me."

Castiel watches the other man. He has never thought Dean to be stupid. He is a lieutenant after all. Still, it takes a moment for him to put it together.

"Sam...isn't my brother?"

"You remember him being there." Castiel attempts to soothe.

"But it wasn't real." Dean says sharply. "I remember now, I remember my parents, my sister...not Sam."

"Sam...was from my time." Castiel sighs. "He was in a car accident, and he woke up with you – in the 70's, where you believed he was your brother. But...he came back to the present for a while, he came out of his coma, and he...he killed himself, to get back to you."

Dean closes his eyes for half a second, then reaches blindly for the bottle again.

"And when he drowned here?"

"He was already gone in the present." Castiel says softly.

"So are we..." Dean's voice dries up and he takes a slug of scotch. "Are we in comas?"

"I don't think so." Castiel whispers.

Dean's face creases and he sits in silence, digesting.

Castiel feels his stomach twist, his veins swimming with chill alcohol, which now seems not in the least comforting. His breath hitches, and he feels despair radiating from Dean, mixing with his own. It's real, this...limbo they're in. Cold and dark and inescapable. Dean has been here for...at least thirty years. Thirty years – Castiel can't take it, would rather die.

"Fuck." Dean says, startling him.

"Fuck!" Dean throws the glass, and it hits the wall opposite with a sharp crack, dashing itself into pieces.

Castiel is so surprised that he finds himself saying, "It was me."

Dean looks at him.

"It was me...the boy, today...it was me."

Dean's brows knit in confusion, then smooth out in horror.

Castiel's next breath, when it comes, is shaky.

Dean rubs a hand over his face, drunk, drowning in so much human misery that he can barely think.

Thinking becomes irrelevant once he reaches out, pulls Castiel closer, fingers sliding into his hair.

The warmth of the kiss fights the ice cold that laps at their hearts, like chill dock water. They taste and feel real to one another. Nothing else exists – the building, the furnishings – but when Dean sinks into Castiel, he knows – can feel every inch of him as something real, and solid. The heaving of his breath, the shy kicks of his hips, thighs spread open around Dean's waist. He smells real – like aftershave and sweat and scotch, a pulse flutters in his wrists, his chest, his quickening insides. His mouth is quick and hot, greedy against Dean's own.

That's how he knows it's real.

He remembers now though – it comes back with stark reality as he pummels Castiel's unresisting body into the bed. He remembers being thirty, watching all his friends on the force get married and have kids. They kept telling him that he should find someone – but he didn't want to. He liked his apartment – his unironed shirts and overflowing ashtrays. It was the only place he didn't have to lie.

As he mouths Castiel's neck, the soft skin blurring into stubble under his mouth, he remembers what the other man, what this time-traveller, had said to him.

_One day you'll love someone enough._

He had never loved anyone enough. No man had ever been worth the way he knew he'd be treated. Hounded, assaulted, imprisoned. He had never met anyone who made it worth it.

Castiel's splayed thighs twitch, his stomach folds a little more, baring himself up just a bit further. Dean pitches forwards, covering Castiel's body with his own. Eye to eye as Castiel's hands clutch at his back.

Dean's thirty-six, or at least, he thought he was. But, if he was that age when he'd died, in the fifties as he remembers, hauled out to an unmarked, shallow grave by thieves. He's lived another thirty years in this world.

Sixty years. Alone. Never loving anyone enough.

He dips his head to Castiel's throat, presses his face to the smooth, salty skin of his throat. Pressed so close to Cas's body, he can't thrust as hard, but keeps his hips low, moving slow but deep, till it burns all the way up his spine.

He doesn't realise how odd he's acting, till Castiel wraps his arms around him fully, holding him close.

He doesn't let him go, even once Dean has shuddered to a stop, lying still on top of Castiel's small, shudder wracked frame.

"Does this mean...do we live forever?"

"I don't know." Castiel whispers, because something intimate has uncoiled between them. Something worthy of a whisper after all their shouting.

"Cas..." Dean leans up, looking down into Castiel's eyes, bordered by damp lashes. "I can't hide this, forever."

It says so much – that they have forever, that Dean wants him forever, that he wants more than a quick lay in the dead of night.

"Maybe tomorrow we can...go for a drink."

"A fake drink in a fake bar." Dean huffs.

"Maybe it's better this way...not knowing that we're in pain somewhere...it'd hurt too much." He reaches up and touches Dean's face. "Besides, I'd have missed you by sixty years."

"Trust you to keep me waiting." Dean murmurs.

"And you couldn't find someone else? Stubborn ass."

It's not the final word on their world. They have so much left to understand, to realise. In the end, after all the struggling, the struggle to be together, to fend off everyone else, to understand that everyone – Chuck, Rufus, Bex...has a story, had a life at some other time...it goes on, filling their days, giving them a purpose.

Still, that night, Castiel does not think of his younger self, of Dean's body rotting in the ground. He thinks instead of all things he knows.

_My name is Castiel Novak. I was shot, and found myself in 1982. I could be dead, in a coma or back in time. Maybe somewhere between all three. I have to fight to understand where I am, and how I got here. What it means, and what I am now._

_But, I am not alone. _


End file.
